Orioles shut out Braves in opener of Blue Ridge championship series

July 19, 2011|By JACK HILL III | Staff Correspondent

BRUNSWICK, Md. — The Brunswick Orioles took advantage of 10 walks issued by Hagerstown Braves pitchers on the way to a 5-0 victory on Tuesday night in the opening game of the Blue Ridge Adult League Baseball championship series.

“When you give up 10 walks to a good team like Brunswick, they are going to manufacture runs off of them,” Braves manager Mike Kipe said. “In the third inning we made a costly error and they manufactured a run off of that. They were able to manufacture runs throughout the entire game.”

“Dan has been one of our top aces all year, and he showed why tonight,” Brunswick manager Roger Dawson said. “He pounded the zone pretty consistently. It’s good to get the first win. It definitely wasn’t easy. Eventually, we were able to get to their pitcher and we got a few opportunities when we were able to draw a few walks. We weren’t trying to hit pitches above the hands and also stay off the low pitches.”

“Their pitcher did a nice job,” Kipe said. “He moves the ball in and out. He has a nice off-speed pitch to keep us off balance.”

The Braves (15-15) had a chance in the first inning. Tyler Beard led off with a single to left and stole second, but was caught stealing third to take Hagerstown out of a potential opportunity.

“I thought we had an opportunity in the first inning to score a run, but we let that slip away,” Kipe said. “That would have been an important run to get things going for us. We had a couple chances to score runs, but we just couldn’t capitalize.

Brunswick (24-5) broke onto the scoreboard in the third inning. Jake Darr led off by reaching base on a throwing error, took second on a balk, moved to third on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly to center by Ty Main.

The Orioles added two more runs in the fourth. With one out, both John Mangold and Frank Ziere drew walks before Wayne Toms hit an RBI double to center. Darr added a sacrifice fly to right to score Ziere.

Hagerstown gave up five of its 10 walks in the fifth inning. Two of the runners were erased on a double play, but a bases-loaded walk to Ziere made it 4-0.

Brunswick closed the scoring in the sixth. Darr led off with a single to center, took second on a wild pitch and scored when Main reached base on a fielding error.